I was bound to be disappointed, I suppose, but I didn’t expect to be shocked. That I am. The unhappiness in the DA in Kwa-Zulu Natal is palpable and not without due cause. I told my readers I’d report back on the debates taking place ahead of the Provincial Congress happening today, if members took…

So. Congress 2017 in the Gauteng Province of the Democratic Alliance is over. Except it isn’t. John Moodey has been re-elected to the position of Provincial Leader for the fourth time and that’s that. Except it isn’t. The DA marches forward – with all the venom and the verbiage spewed during the contest for this…

Yet another senior DA public representative has been harshly disciplined after offending the moral sensibilities of the party’s leadership. It’s another woman. Another white woman. This one is Afrikaans-speaking and hails from Potchefstroom and a province that she helped put on the (then) Democratic Party map back in the 90s. Juanita Terblanche has just been…

I’ve got a lot of expletives in my head, which not even Zille’s apology will tempt me to use to soil my precious Life in SA page. So I absolutely won’t. What it does bring to mind was this exchange between my former British in-laws when taking a dig at each other in particularly trying…

Where do I start on the saga of Helen Zille? WHERE? There is a plethora of views out there and I’m feeling like a fish out of water. It seems that very few people think about this matter the way I do and it makes me wonder if I’m swimming upstream in ignorant bliss. Except…

So the air is thick with the spectre of colonialism, let loose by the remarks of Helen Zille. For which she is about to be punished. I’ve had my say on Facebook, so I won’t bore my readers with my views once again, except to say that: I KNOW she doesn’t have a racist bone…

I’ve been mulling over the word “ethics” lately, for obvious reasons. It’s such a subjective term, that upon reflection, I’m astonished that judiciaries and legislatures across the world have managed to write sets of rules for society, let alone apply them. At the risk of being branded a member of the irrelevant colonial blue-rinse brigade,…

The day has to come that I address the issue of race in my musings. So it might as well be now. Here goes. I’m white. I’m female. I’m English-speaking. That might be important to you. Here’s what’s important to me: I’m a human being. I’m an individual. I’m a mother. I’m a wife. I’m…

It amazes me daily how many South Africans fail to ask their public representatives to assist them with the various problems they encounter when dealing with their local authorities, government departments or officialdom in general.

About Shelley Loe

I’ve been a party activist, office-bearer, staff member and public representative for the DA for the past 28 years, and now it’s over. Today I’m free as a bird and ready to put pen to paper on all things South African.